The Disappearance of Seto Kaiba
by Dexandra
Summary: When Kaiba shows up on Joey's doorstep desperate for help with a bullet in his back only one thing is certain: someone wants him dead. Together they escape, but while his body remains mostly unscathed, the Seto Kaiba that Joey knew has disappeared, and in his absence someone new rises. Someone that Kaiba thought he'd killed a long time ago.
1. Flashforward

**Flashforward**

Kaiba's boots scraped the cement as he backed away from Joey, the headlights of the traffic that roared beside them illuminating his face for seconds at a time, carving gaunt shadows into his chiseled features with each passing vehicle.

Tremors racked his long legs, and with his towering height he took on the appearance of a skyscraper seconds from caving in on itself.

Joey's eyes traced him, and confused thoughts cluttered his head as he took the sight in.

Kaiba was curling up, hunkering down as though preparing himself for an attack. He gripped his bloodstained coat like a lifeline and tugged it around his body.

He had always been tall and slender, but with the way he held himself, his physical properties had never affected Joey's view of his strength or power. Now he was hunched, shrinking under Joey's gaze. With a simple change of posture, every slender, gangly aspect of his teenage figure was on display, and Joey's intimidating rival had suddenly become so frail. Such small changes, but with them, he was a ghost of the man he was days ago.

"What's going on? Is…is this a test?" his voice sounded so clear and acquitted, so absolutely opposite to Kaiba's brimming-with-bravado rasp that Joey found himself frozen on the spot

"Test…what are you-?"

"Where am I?" his eyes shimmered in the passing lights, widening with alarm.

"Who are you?"

Joey lost control of his jaw and it dropped open. After a few seconds he gasped out an uneasy laugh as his brain struggled to formulate words.

"What, don't remember this ugly mug?" he forced out another laugh and watched Kaiba's eyebrows draw together, eyes wide and lips quivering. He looked like a child on the verge of tears.

_'What the hell?'_ Joey thought as he found himself grasping for words.

"Hey, you know me!" He tried to keep his tone light and joking, but his voice grew louder with each word as panic wrapped its icy fingers around his throat.

"Ya know, Joey Wheeler, the amateur, the...mmmh…" he gulped down his pride. "…The monkey, the _dog_! All names _you_ gave me, pal!"

Kaiba's usually pristine hair shone with grease and sweat in the passing lights. He sent it flying as he shook his head violently like a child shaking a snow globe. Like his memories had detached and drifted to the bottom of his skull, and if he tossed his head enough he could churn them up from the depths.

Joey felt short of breath. It seemed as though the traffic was speeding up, spinning around them in a sickening blend of painted metal and blurred light. The attackers on their tail, his and Kaiba's injuries, everything seemed to drift away as he struggled to process just what was going on.

"We've known each other for years! You've gone on adventures with me and Yug', and Tristan and-hey, you remember Yugi, right? 'King of Games', your greatest rival!"

Eyes fluttered, lips quivered, and then he sent his hair flying again with another frantic shake. "I don't know who you're talking about. I've never met you in my life."

_'What the HELL?'_

Kaiba's eyes glittered with moisture, and the tremors had spread to his hands. A man with a child in his eyes, he looked genuinely terrified.

Joey's knees began shaking as well, and he realized that Kaiba had been inching away like a scared animal the whole time, and he was about five steps away from stumbling into the churning mess of cars.

"Hey, stop! You'll-" Kaiba darted back suddenly as what Joey intended to be a quiet warning was amplified into a shout by his alarm.

"Kaiba, wait! The cars-"

"Why are you calling me that?"

Joey blinked. "Huh?"

"That's not my name, don't call me that!"

_'I'm talking to a stranger.' _Joey realized.

The traffic flew around them faster than ever and Joey couldn't tell if his sudden, sharp nausea was the result of motion sickness, his injuries, or the shock of the situation. He was so absorbed in his confusion, he didn't notice Kaiba's body tensing in preparation to run, and wasn't fast enough to stop him as he fled, hurtling his frail body into the oncoming traffic.

* * *

Updated 9/7/16  
Minor changes in sentence structure and spelling.

* * *

cover photo

Pixiv ID: 16799118  
Member: 乙んご  
Source: member_ ?mode=medium&amp;illust_id=16799118


	2. Ammunition

**Ammunition**

"Shit." Kaiba muttered under his breath as he braked seconds before slamming into the car that had just lurched into his path, the power of the brake shoving his and his brother's heads into the plush leather of their seats. He tried to remain patient as the tiny car jolted and jerked in front of his silver Ferrari, struggling it's way around the evening's traffic, but his temper flared up for the fourth time that afternoon and he ended up honking his horn and revving the powerful engine irritably until the car dodged out of his way.

He was being an asshole, he knew that, but after his terrible day it felt good to take out some of his frustration on innocent passers by.

Within he was a furious wreck, but he tried to ensure that on the surface he was calm. Even with his attempts to keep his anger contained, Mokuba knew him far too well. If he turned to face his brother, all the boy needed to do was sweep a quick gaze over Kaiba's features to be able to easily gauge his emotions. Luckily for him, Mokuba kept his eyes trained forward, settling instead on glaring a hole in the windscreen.

Unlike his brother, Mokuba lacked the reflex to disguise his emotions and was making no move to mask his own displeasure. He had matured in the past year, sure, but his sulky expression and refusal to meet Kaiba's eyes were just a few of the juvenile traits that surged to the surface in times like these.

"Times like these" being one of the common disagreements between the Kaiba siblings that, for any number of reasons, deteriorated into the much more rare fully-fledged fight.

They were closer than most brothers could ever be, and they shared a unique bond wrought from years of pain and the shared endurance of it. But regardless of their bond, they were still two very different people.

With his difficult nature Kaiba clashed with most people without much provocation, and while Mokuba's personality usually corresponded with his brother's well, other times it opposed it fiercely. Their fights were few and far in between, but when they did occur they were usually unavoidable.

To make things worse, Kaiba's temper, self-importance, and stubborn nature were traits shared by them both. So now, with both of their colossal egos fighting for dominance in the tiny space of the sports car, the air was so thick with tension Kaiba felt the urge to crack a window. But he resisted; in this moment of stillness even the smallest thing could set his brother off and open the floodgates again.

That was another reason that Mokuba refused to look at him and neither of them dared to speak. Right now, everything was static, they'd reached something akin to a stalemate, and while they were quietly licking their wounds in their territories at either side of the car neither of them wanted to disturb it. So they sat in silence.

The calm would be broken eventually, that was certain. After all, soon they would be at Kaiba Corp. In the workplace, they'd have to interact in one way or another and every time they'd attempted so far it had been seconds before they were both fuming and spitting venom. Kaiba wished that they could fight and make up before they got to work, but considering the magnitude of his brother's anger, an argument in his office seemed unavoidable.

He wasn't looking forward to it, but he wasn't one to prolong the inevitable either. He just wanted to get there and get all this over with, but the afternoon traffic jam had other ideas.

It was grating on his nerves, and he kept subconsciously revving his engine, trying to ignore the tiny itch at back on his skull urging him to floor the accelerator. With the twitch of a peddle, his shiny Ferrari could reach 100 kilometers an hour in under three seconds, and it felt a crime to surround such a fast car with the grinding metal sludge of a traffic jam.

The Ferrari had been an impulse buy in an expensive dealer on the outskirts of Domino, in an area reserved only for the wealthy. He hadn't been there to shop, but the sleek silver vehicle had caught his eye at almost the exact same time it had caught his brother's, and Mokuba had whined and nudged until Kaiba gave in to his own materialistic hunger for the car and bought it then and there.

It wasn't nearly as ridiculous as a few of his other purchases that sat lonely in the underground garage back at his mansion, but it was excessive all the same.

It had been a good day. He'd sent the limo home ahead of time and sped his new toy along the highways leading in and out of Domino so fast the roads seemed to shred and peel away under the wheels. And when he'd opened the roof, exposing them to the harsh, slapping wind as they tore through it, Mokuba had hooted and squealed like a delinquent next to him. He hadn't cared that his neatly preened hair was everywhere, or that they were breaking several traffic laws, he'd simply let the happiness swallow him up, and every time he'd settled into the leather seats since, the memory had lingered warm around him.

That memory was lost on him now. He wanted to embrace the joy of it, he really did, but his anger repelled it. He wondered if his brother felt the same nagging nostalgia, or had his memories of happier times had been abandoned in his rage? Kaiba hoped they hadn't. They were key to this ending well.

He gently pressed down on the accelerator, feeling the engine rumble through the car with gentle whispers of its immense speed and power. In this clogged traffic, the speed that made it unique was useless.

Trapped by its surroundings and the laws that kept its power bound. Just like him.

A short while later (but not as short a while as usual), Kaiba was immaculately parking in his reserved space in the Kaiba Corp parking lot.

He reached down to unbuckle his seat belt and jumped as the door slammed loudly beside him. Mokuba had moved fast. He'd probably been itching to spring from the seat the moment he buckled himself into it.

When Kaiba peered through the tinted windows he could see Mokuba marching towards the elevator. While grabbing his briefcase from the back seat, he wouldn't have time to make it into the awaiting elevator with his brother, and the boy knew that. They'd ride separately.

Fine. Great, actually. Being trapped in an elevator together would be even worse than being trapped in the tiny sports car.

The separate elevator rides also gave Mokuba plenty of time to shut himself into the private room installed on the left side of Kaiba's office before he even got there, which Kaiba was absolutely sure he'd do.

What a forward thinker his brother was, preparing ahead to avoid contact, to shut him out. _Intelligent._

He felt his lip curling at that.

_'He learned from the best.'_ A cruel voice snapped at him from within, and he found himself unable to deny it. It still pissed him off, though.

Thankfully for him, his separate elevator stopped only once on it's way up. It rolled to a stop on the twenty-third floor and its gold doors parted to reveal several employees, all cocky men in suits chuckling among themselves, but they halted at the sight of the elevator's single passenger.

All Kaiba Corp personnel already knew better than to pester their boss, but after the fight his frustration was unusually potent. Left alone to stew, it had collected in the cramped space and when the doors slid open, it rolled over the men like tear gas. They all took a collective step back.

When none of them made the suicidal move to enter, Kaiba pressed the close doors button and examined their awkward fidgeting and sheepish dodging of his gaze. As the doors slid shut again he caught a brief glimpse of the relief on their faces.

He reached the top floor and immediately marched over to his receptionist to ensure he wouldn't have to deal with anyone else that afternoon.

With the click of his office doors behind him, he immediately began to calm. The sense of the routine of work washed over him and the security of repetition smothered the afternoon's stress. He set his briefcase on the floor beside his desk and eased into his plush leather chair, unwinding.

As he'd predicted, Mokuba had shut himself into the private room on the left side of his office. It seemed that he'd taken a vow of silence that would last longer than Kaiba had expected, and was content to prolong the fight until they got home. That suited Kaiba just fine, since he had a reputation to uphold and intended to keep his employees as far from his personal life as possible, not to mention the potential danger if word got out that the relationship between the once inseparable Kaiba brothers was strained. Some may interpret a fight between them as chinks in Kaiba Corp's armor, then they'd gather like vultures as they always did.

On the other hand, the longer they were left to stew in their anger, the worse the fight would be. Neither of them could withstand the tension of an unresolved argument for long, so it would have to be dealt with eventually, preferably sooner rather than later.

Kaiba could recall one particular argument where they'd gone home, eaten dinner and went to bed without a word, the pressure steadily building. Then, at midnight Mokuba had stomped into his room, unable to sleep with his anger as a bed mate. So, intent to reboot the argument and loaded with new found ammunition after hours of thought, his brother screamed at him until he woke up. Then screamed some more.  
The fight had lasted the rest of the night and been resolved at around the crack of dawn, and he'd woken up late with Mokuba snoring peacefully next to him and a migraine rumbling beneath his temples.

He'd rather not deal with that again. While neither of them were capable of surrender, he held on to the hope that this could end well, and soon.

After a while of checking stock shares and sending emails, Mokuba appeared in his peripherals, stepping back into his office. Rather than facing him, he fixed his gaze at his laptop and continued working, resisting the urge to give in to the seething energy his brother was giving off.

When the kid finally spoke it was with a mix of annoyance and self-importance. "Have you seen the blueprints for the extension of Kaiba Land?"

Kaiba blinked. _'So he's working. Or wants me to think that he is. How mature.'_

Mokuba had personally volunteered to oversee a small extension of Kaiba Land and he was fiercely proud of the developments that had been taking place thanks to his leadership. His pride was appropriate too, the extension was particularly tricky as it included a brand new Kaiba Land ride with a design that had never been released to the public before.

The ride especially was close to Kaiba's heart as its main energy source was a direct reinvention of the old Kaiba Corp's crowning achievement in weapon technology: the successful prototypes of directed-energy weapons that began their testing in small scale battle scenarios when Kaiba was still growing up under Gozaburo's tutelage. "Direct reinvention", meaning that it borrowed directly from the weapons themselves. Was that legal? Probably not, but his original concept was based exclusively off the weapons in question and he wanted to bring it to life.

Conceptualizing the reworking of dangerous weapons into devices of joy is complicated, but rather easy, Kaiba found, when trying to escape the sight of something as horrifying as combat footage.

_Hours of old Kaiba Corp weapons blasting men on the battlefield to bits._

_Hours of never ending gore with Gozaburo's beady eyes fixed to his face, gauging the length of every blink, anticipating even the slightest flinch._

_Seto watched the bullets of chattering machine guns shred through soldiers like paper. He watched the glowing dots of laser sniper scopes dancing on men's backs and heads before blasting through flesh and bone. Then came the star of the show: the directed energy prototype that they unleashed on the unsuspecting ground troops. The huge truck rolled forward, the antenna twisting to face it's target, and then the battlefield erupted into beams of light and balls of flame. When the attack had finished, the camera was rushed in to record the aftermath before the bodies settled._

_And he'd thought advanced calculus was bad._

_The old man's hand crept over his neck and landed like a dead weight on his left shoulder. "One day this will become your legacy." whisky breath swept over his cheek. Seto stared ahead, eyes watering, and nodded._

_He would take on Kaiba Corp's legacy, but not in the way his adoptive father hoped. He promised himself he wouldn't just destroy those weapons, he'd mutate them into something good. He'd twist those devices of horror beyond recognition._

_The film ended on a proud close up of the machine, still thrumming with energy, the shiny Kaiba Corporation logo on it's side splattered with blood._

_It'd all be unrecognizable by the time he was finished._

Years later when the time came to make his idea reality, he couldn't resist the satisfaction of using the machines themselves in the official design. He got many raised eyebrows and feeble inquiries from the decision, especially considering that Kaiba Corp's active weapons and prototypes had been removed from the battlefield and destroyed on his very orders, but, in regular fashion, he went through with it anyway to a grand result.

He couldn't have been happier when Mokuba decided to incorporate it into the Kaiba Land extension. It always gave him a thrill to watch as another piece of Gozaburo's empire was broken down and reconstructed to build his own, and it made him swell with pride to watch his little brother conquer the man's abuse with almost as much passion as he did.

Kaiba was more than pleased with his brother's performance, but he let that slip now, taking a light stab at his ego.

"No, I haven't seen the blueprints. Aren't they supposed to be your responsibility?"

Mokuba's cheeks turned pink at that and he ground his teeth and shot Kaiba's own signature scowl back at him.

"Yes, they are my responsibility. That's why I put them somewhere safe, but now they're just gone. In fact, a lot of the documents on the extensions are missing. Mostly documents on the _new ride_." He growled, his voice taking on an accusatory edge.

It was nothing to panic about. All of the documents were safely on Kaiba's computer and could easily be printed again, but the silence between them had been interrupted and Kaiba could feel the calm atmosphere of his office crashing down around them.

"Are you accusing me of something?" Kaiba quirked an eyebrow.

"No, I'm asking if you moved them."

"I haven't touched your documents Mokuba."

"Really?"

"Really. What would I get out of that?"

"Oh I don't know, maybe you just want to piss me off?

"I'm not going to go around hiding important documents just to irritate you. Stop taking on a false sense of importance, my whole world doesn't revolve around you."

They both knew that wasn't true, but the comment spurred something inside Mokuba and his eyes flashed angrily. For a few seconds they just stared at each other furiously, like two volcanoes threatening to erupt, until Mokuba whirled on his heel and stomped back into his room, slamming the door behind him.

_'And there goes the maturity.'_ Kaiba quipped to himself while he still had the nerve to be smug.

He lent back in his chair, allowing his rage to cool off and dissipate. As soon as his anger left him, all of his common sense came flooding back and he found himself regretting the way that he'd acted. Not just in this instance, but all afternoon.  
He kept hoping to himself that this would end well, but it was the responsibility of both of them to ensure that would happen, and rather than taking the high road, he was behaving like an idiot. Of course Mokuba was too, but that was beside the point.

He'd essentially told Mokuba that he didn't matter to him. In his bitterness, the words had tumbled out before he put any real thought into them. Considering them now, he knew that they would cut his brother deep, and he hoped that the kid would remain too angry to come to the same conclusions before he had time to correct them.

Of course it would be best to ensure that his brother wasn't hurt by apologizing now, but he couldn't bring himself to do that. His pride was too large to swallow.

Grumbling to himself, he stood and approached the room to the right of his office. Thank god for private bathrooms, he needed to cool down.

The minute he swung open the door the bathroom's many mirrors sent his chiseled features ricocheting about the room, and he was reminded of the toll that the fight had taken on him when he was greeted with several reflections that highlighted every line and crease on his face.

He never quite knew why the room had so many mirrors. It was a fairly large bathroom, but nowhere near the size of the elaborate ones in the mansion, and yet the mirrors in it seemed to dominate the marble wall's surface.

The wide mirror fixed above the sink had a body length twin on the wall opposite it that sent reflections bouncing off each other in a dizzying, never-ending illusion that seemed to swallow up the room, and they allowed Kaiba to simultaneously see both his front and back as he approached the porcelain sink and began splashing cold water on his face.

He supposed the mirrors might have been an indication of some deluded sense of vanity that Gozaburo held when the office belonged to him. Or maybe they were a deliberate choice, because they proved quite useful for someone as high-maintenance as Kaiba, who liked to ensure that not a hair was out of place when he left the office.

The state of his hair now, messy and saturated, was a testament to how worked up he'd become. Mokuba was and always would be one of the only people remaining on Earth who could manage to get under the stoic Seto Kaiba's diamond-hard skin.

He lent against the sink and shook water droplets out of his hair, breathing deeply. Eventually he located the thrum of his heartbeat and concentrated on counting his beats per minute, easing into a state of relaxation.

He was entirely oblivious to the rest of the world for the first time in his wild day, which made the series of events that followed all the more impossibly lucky.

In the end it didn't matter why the mirrors were there, if they were indeed a result of Gozaburo's vanity or just some strategic design choice. They saved Kaiba's life. Because seconds after he swept the water out of his eyes, he glanced up at his reflection and saw it.

The tiny red dot.

It trembled over his chestnut hair, looking almost like a crimson fairy dancing at the back of his head. But fairies didn't exist and he knew the laser scope of a sniper rifle when he saw one.

It was about then that his body went into autopilot. He didn't even register having ducked, all he knew was that one second he was staring at his reflection and the next he was crouched on the floor with the mirror exploding above him. Glass fragments rained down on him, and even with the sound of the mirror shattering around him he still heard the distinctive sound of a window smashing in a room nearby. If he had the time to realize what that meant he may have begun panicking, but his adrenaline didn't allow for that.

It flooded his veins and the euphoria of it overwhelmed him until he felt nothing else, and then he was flying.

He sprinted from the bathroom and fireworks followed him and blew holes in his wake. The air filled with wood chips and shards of glass. He was drowning in the sound of bullets tearing his office apart and his heartbeat pounding in his in his ears. The only thought in his head was to _run_. Because if he didn't…

Gozaburo's combat footage flashed into his mind, and he recalled the way that the men had died, bullets tearing them to pieces, if he hesitated even for a second that would be him. Suddenly fear spiked through him, sharp and cold from his groin to the pit of his stomach. But rather than freezing him, it fueled him and he ran even faster.

As he sprinted across the office, he was too occupied by the bullets exploding on his tail to even know where he was headed until he was already tumbling through the door. When he did, he stopped dead in his tracks.

He hadn't been prepared for what he saw, and it slammed into him so hard every coherent thought that his dazed brain had been struggling to form flew out of his head and he grasped for the first thing that came to him.

Mokuba's hair was getting dirty.

He had to clean it before it dried, and got them in trouble.

It had always been getting them in trouble at the orphanage. After playtime, the caretakers would drag him over to Seto with knots everywhere, peppered with sand from the sandbox or matted with dirt from the playground, and leave him to untangle them as best as he could. Mokuba would shriek and cry when they tried to brush his hair, and he always made such a fuss that they threatened to cut it all off, so Seto always took extra care to make sure his brother's hair was perfectly clean.

It was dirty now. Covered with blood, floating in it. He needed to clean it before…

_'Before what?'_

His office lay in pieces and the machine gun was still wrecking havoc behind him and creeping closer, but at this moment time stood still. And Kaiba didn't care. All he cared about was his baby brother lying on the floor.

In a pool of blood.

* * *

Updated 9/7/16  
Minor changes in sentence structure and spelling throughout. Also added. flashback sequence and more information on Gozaburo's weapons.


	3. Blood and Broken Glass

**Blood and Broken Glass**

For a while Kaiba just stood in the doorway, unfeeling, unhearing. He wished he were unseeing too.

He stared at Mokuba's body, sprawled on the floor.

His hair spilled artfully around his head and covered his face and shards of glass scattered all around him, glinting in the sun that leaked through the broken window behind him like diamonds. The reports and papers that covered the desk in front of him were ruined, splattered with red.

Beneath his head, blood had gathered in a large, circular puddle, and the afternoon's sunlight danced grotesquely across its shiny surface. Even now, with his eyes seeming to buzz in their sockets and blur his vision, Kaiba could see the edges of the puddle budding and creeping outward. It had been only seconds since the shot, and now it was pooling on the floor, soaking into Mokuba's glossy black hair. Pouring out of him.

So much blood.

The scene shocked Kaiba so badly that he didn't register it as reality, and for a while he felt nothing at all, like his brain was floating in honey. But soon enough the truth of what he was seeing started to sink in, and reality came roaring back, along with his emotions.

He wished he'd stayed numb.

_'Oh god. Oh my god Mokuba.'_

The panic seized him and clenched at his stomach, twisting cruelly until his lunch bubbled up in his throat, searing and acrid, and he fell to his knees and vomited so violently his eyes watered.

The fear that gripped his arms and legs was incapacitating, and he started trembling all over. His vision began to cloud, black and grey static veiled his eyesight, and the backs of his eyes ached. It took all of his energy to crawl his way over to his brother. His breaths were tiny and short, and his head swam. He felt like he was going to faint. But he couldn't. Not now.

He had to get to Mokuba.

He knelt beside his brother and slid an arm under his shoulders, lifting him out of the blood. Locks of hair, wet and heavy, clung to the floor, and the way his head lolled lifelessly made Kaiba want to vomit again.

He dragged the boy into his lap, the movement caused the hair that veiled Mokuba's face to shift and Kaiba caught a glimpse of his eyes shut and lips parted peacefully, almost like he was sleeping.

_'But he isn't, is he?'_

A chill went through Kaiba's body, along his arms and down his back, and the room seemed to sway. His empty stomach felt as though it was sinking through his body all the way to the floor.

He began grabbing at his brother's neck, desperately searching for a pulse but unable to keep his shaking fingers still. Then he slid fumbling hands up the boy's bloodstained shirt and pressed them against his chest, pushing them into the pectoral muscles that had only recently begun developing, chasing down a heartbeat, any sign of life.

He found nothing.

Mokuba had been kidnapped many times, and naturally Kaiba had always panicked and been afraid. He was his brother after all. But even when Mokuba was in terrible danger, there was hope. A ransom to pay. A duel to win. Someone to take revenge on. But not now.

Now, his brother lay limp in his arms and there was nothing he could do, and nothing he could have done to stop it. He couldn't pay for Mokuba's life back, or duel the bullet out of his skull. He couldn't even avenge his brother; the shooter's anonymity protected them from his rage.

It had all happened so fast.

He was completely helpless. Compared to what had happened to Mokuba in the past this was so cold. Unfeeling, unchangeable and so very cruel. There was no Shadow Realm, or "magic", or fate. No second chances. He'd never felt so powerless in his entire life. He'd never felt so empty. Even when he had nothing he had Mokuba.

Then it sunk in, minutes ago they'd been fighting. Mokuba had died angry and hateful.

_"My whole world doesn't revolve around you."_ His own words echoed in his head.

Mokuba had died thinking he didn't care.

"Mokie…" he choked out between breaths.

His eyes prickled and filled with warmth. He clenched them shut and felt wetness swell out of his eyes and roll down his cheeks.

Seeing Mokuba's body had hollowed him out and left a big empty space in its wake, and now something was filling that space in him, something big and dark and terrifying. It roared louder than thunder and went berserk, tearing him up from within. It built pressure inside him and surged up, forced its way out of his eyes and mouth, left him burying his face in his brother's hair and sobbing, letting out inhuman, hysterical screams.

He was so lost in his grief that he was oblivious to what was happening around him, but even if the gunfire hadn't stopped, in that moment he wouldn't have cared. In fact, the thought of the bullets tearing into him seemed almost relieving, because nothing could be more painful than this.

He always told himself that the past was worthless, that the future was all he cared about, but all of a sudden his future was crumbling and slipping through his fingers. A future without Mokuba was a dark, meaningless place and now his past was all he had. And so his most cherished and fiercely guarded memories came swimming to the surface.

Chess at the orphanage, junk food for dinner on Friday nights, tearing down the highways on their shiny new car while Mokuba laughed beside him…happiness seeped through the pain and then sparked even more.

It was like the floodgates had opened and years of loneliness and hurt started pouring out of him, and with the only enduring light in his life suddenly snuffed it all overwhelmed him. He hadn't cried since he was a child and somewhere along the way he'd forgotten how to handle it, and he choked on his own ugly, pitiful sobs as they rushed out uncontrollably one after another. Panic set in as he began hyperventilating, and he struggled to control his breathing until something made him stop altogether.

He felt a twitch under his hand.

It was still resting on Mokuba's chest, buried under his shirt, and he felt something shift.

At that, the thunderous pain in him hesitated, and in the time it gave him he frantically moved his hand up again and closed his eyes, willing it to stop shaking.

There was a heartbeat under his palm, slow, but sure. He'd somehow missed it in his panic. Mokuba was alive.

A breath shuddered out of him, erratic yet controlled and he willed himself to calm as he rolled Mokuba's head over in his arms.

The gaping bullet hole that he'd previously been expecting to find wasn't there. Or at least he couldn't see it.

He dipped his fingers into Mokuba's silky black hair and crept them along his scalp until he met the wetness of blood. Then he combed them through the stickiness, searching, until he felt the puckering rawness of an open wound. He gently pressed his fingers along it, tracing the outline of a small, shallow cut. A graze.

The bullet that had shattered Kaiba's bathroom mirror into a million pieces had _grazed_ him.

This time there was no hesitation in his influx of emotion. His relief slammed into him like a freight train, and once again he was immobilized and gasping for breath, tears still rolling down his cheeks.

The terrible knotting in his stomach unwound all at once, so fast he felt like vomiting again, but instead he let his head fall back and let out a bout of gasping, hysterical laughter. His brother was _alive._

He pulled the unconscious boy close and kissed his head, and the rust of blood danced over his lips.

"You've got to stop doing this to me, kiddo…" he muttered against Mokuba's skin. His voice grated painfully and his adrenaline was slowly ebbing, his body buzzing and shuddering as it released everything that had been savaging him earlier, leaving him so exhausted that, settled among the blood and broken glass, he could have fallen asleep right there.

But then something glided into his peripheral vision and every thought that he'd cast away in his grief came crawling back in.

Evacuation alarms blaring, his wreckage of an office.

The gunfire.

_'Shit.'_

He allowing himself a second or two to examine the helicopter hovering outside the window, then he gathered Mokuba in his arms and scrambled towards the door just as the bullets started flying and the room once again erupted around him.

Mokuba was a fairly light kid, and Kaiba was strong enough that he could literally lift the boy with one hand if he had to, but he stumbled supporting Mokuba's weight now. It was no surprise, his energy was finite and he'd wasted most of it grieving before he even realized that Mokuba was alive.

When he was under Gozaburo's teaching the man had drilled into his head that emotions were useless, that they made you weak. He was feeling the literal connotations of those words now.

As the remainders of his adrenaline wore away, many things that had previously been censored by the epinephrine in his veins slowly began making their presence known, one after the other like an agonizing roll call.

Stinging pinpricks seared over his hands and knees where he'd ground them into broken glass and mirror while crawling on the floor, and he felt a few tiny pricks on his face and neck where wood chips and glass shards had lightly punctured his exposed skin. His body was now running on fumes, as his stomach was aching and empty, and his trembling arms and legs clearly evidenced that. He could also feel a persistent sting in the back of his left calf, becoming more and more pronounced with every step, and he became increasingly convinced that he had a piece of something stuck in it.

With the pain of all of these injuries manifesting at once, it took all of his effort to run out of his office limping and supporting an unconscious child all the way, but Seto Kaiba did what he did best. He endured.

As he made his way into the lobby outside his office, things around him soon became a blur as he used all of his remaining energy to pinpoint his focus on two things: the location of the gunfire and keeping his brother safe, cradled in his arms. The rest of his energy was devoted to keeping himself from passing out, and anything of little importance drifted into the distance.

Suddenly a face swam up to him out of the haze. Slicked back, greying hair, dark sunglasses and a light mustache, it was Roland.

His jaw worked as though he was shouting but Kaiba didn't register any words, and his alarm was clear by the sweat that shined over his face and way his forehead crumpled up like paper as it always did when he was panicking. It was a familiar expression for him; he was right-hand man to Seto Kaiba after all.

He continued shouting words that Kaiba couldn't hear and he grabbed at Mokuba's arms as though offering to carry him instead, but rather than allowing him to, Kaiba tightening his grip, a sudden rush of panicked possessiveness taking over.

"No." he growled, voice cracking under the strain. "Just get me out of here."

Roland hesitated for a second and looked as though he was going to insist, before he remembered just who he was talking to and nodded, gripping Kaiba's arm instead.

As he hurried them towards the elevators, Kaiba filled him in on what had happened, simultaneously trying to piece it all together himself.

"There was a helicopter. No…" he recalled the separate gunshots, one for him and one for his brother. "Two, or maybe more. Heavily armed with a high-powered machine gun and sniper rifles. But they're not skilled, they shot like amateurs."

_'Lucky for us.'_

Roland nodded again. "So we'll go by the security car. It's waiting for you outside."

"Have police been notified?"

"They're on their way, but considering the circumstances we need to leave right now."

Kaiba fell silent and showed his appreciation for Roland's efforts by ignoring the fact that his extreme personal space rules were being broken, and keeping quiet as the man tugged him towards the elevators.

Since the alarms had been triggered, the elevators were out of use and the standard evacuation procedure indicated for workers to exit via the stairwell, but they were at the top floor, and Kaiba was in no fit state to climb down all those stairs. Luckily for him Roland had planned ahead, and Kaiba saw his second assistant Fugata poised at the elevator doors, awaiting their arrival.

"The elevator shaft is clear, sir." he nodded at his boss, holding the doors open as the three of them rushed in.

They had used Kaiba's personal ID code (available to only Roland for emergencies) to override the evacuation protocol and allow the elevators to operate for a short while, and as they entered and selected the first floor Kaiba prayed that the shooters weren't inside the building yet.

As the elevator began gliding down, rather than standing aside the two men, Kaiba weakly crouched to the floor, leaning against the wall and holding his brother close in a rare display of vulnerability that made his cheeks burn a little. Sure, he trusted Roland and Fugata as unconditionally as he allowed himself to, but it was still embarrassing to have them see him like this. He decided to ignore that, and focus on Mokuba, trying to gauge the severity of the flesh wound on his scalp without disturbing it. It was then that he realized that the graze was still gushing blood and leaking onto his and Mokuba's clothes.

He gritted his teeth as he pressed his hand against the wound in an attempt to stem the bleeding and blindly reached his other hand up towards his assistants.

"Mokuba's bleeding, I need something to-"

He felt something being pressed into his hand before he could finish, and he hurriedly brought it to Mokuba's head. It was only after crimson began soaking into it that he realized it was a grey suit jacket.

He glanced up to see Roland minus his jacket and staring down at Mokuba. At the sight of his young master battered and bloody the man's professional air melted into something more personal, eyebrows contorting anxiously as he took the sight in.

"Unconscious." Kaiba firmly reassured him. "The bullet just grazed his head."

"But how could an assassin armed with a sniper rifle miss like that?" Roland stammered in disbelief.

Kaiba spoke slowly as the scene played out in his head and he began to connect the dots. "There were two shots and they were about two seconds apart…the first one was for me and it shattered the mirror in my bathroom…I think…I think he was working, heard the mirror break and looked up in time for the bullet to miss." It made sense. It was the reason Mokuba been lying on the floor facing the door with his desk in front of him, and the reason why the graze was on the right of his head. He'd been standing with his back to the window, and he'd looked up towards the bathroom at the sound of the mirror breaking, moving his head almost entirely out of the bullet's path.

When the shot was fired he'd been immersed in his work. Occupied by what was in front of him, paying no attention to his surroundings and completely vulnerable, just like Kaiba had been. The shooters had waited for both of them to let their guards down at the same time before they fired. They'd probably been watching them all afternoon. Kaiba's stomach squirmed uncomfortably at that.

Fugata looked astonished at Kaiba's explanation. "Amazing! Thank god he's alright. To think, if the snipers had fired at the same time…" then he caught a glance of the venomous expression on his boss's face and fell silent.

_'No thank you, I've had my fair share of that today.' _Kaiba thought, grimacing.

But Fugata's statement did make him realize just how unbelievably lucky he and his brother were. The events of that afternoon had played out like steps an intricate dance. If he hadn't looked up in time to see the laser scope, if the snipers had been more precise and fired simultaneously, if a single variable had been altered in that equation, one or both of the Kaiba brothers would be dead.

"And how about you, Sir?" Roland spoke up, breaking Kaiba's train of thought. "Are you alright?"

Kaiba blinked, surprised at the genuine concern in his assistant's voice, before he smirked up at him. "Roland, surely you know me better than that."

Fugata grinned, suddenly inspired. "Of course! Nothing can kill Kaiba but Kaiba!"

Kaiba tried to find pride in that statement, but the searing pain all over his body and the way his brother's blood was drying sticky on his hands sapped any arrogance from his mind.

_'If only that were true.'_

Roland looked anxious, like he wanted to express his worry further, but he was understandably struggling to. When it came to Kaiba, displaying concern was difficult and hinting at pity was a death wish, and there was such a fine line between that most made the wiser choice to say nothing. But Roland looked unsettled, faltering on the line separating personal concern and professionalism.

Now that Kaiba thought about it, it was probably expected. After all that he survived he most likely looked more than a little worse for wear. He wondered if his right-hand man's concern was stemming from the suggestion of a serious injury, or the unfamiliar sight of his red, puffy eyes. He supposed it was quite a strange concept to Roland, that he was capable of crying. It was a strange concept to him too.

The injuries would be taken care of as soon as he got to a hospital and he'd prefer not recounting the grief he'd suffered only minutes ago, so he stared indignantly at Roland until the man glanced away, embarrassed, and concentrated on the amount of floors until they reached street level.

Twenty-one to go.

For a while all was silent except for the humming of the elevator's lights, and all three men took a moment to catch their breath, then as they passed the eighteenth floor Kaiba felt Mokuba stir in his arms.

His stomach crawled up into his throat and he tensed and held his breath as his brother moaned groggily and began to shift in his grip. He heard a gasp from above him and in his peripherals he saw Roland and Fugata lean in on either side of him, waiting nervously.

Kaiba was relieved that Mokuba was waking so easily, but he knew that a bullet graze on the head, while not lethal, was no small matter. He prepared himself for some sort of reaction when his brother finally came to.

In the silence, he listened as Mokuba's breathing began to speed up, and his light groans increased in pitch, quickly changing from confused to scared. He rested his cleaner hand on the boy's cheek in preparation to calm him.

"Mokie…" he began soothingly, but was cut off.

Mokuba began thrashing violently in his grip, letting out hysteric, terrified screams.

Roland and Fugata surged in around him, grabbing the boy's arms and legs to prevent him from further injuring his brother and Kaiba struggled to keep a hold on him. It wasn't an easy task, Mokuba was strong when he wanted to be, and no doubt his physical abilities were currently being amplified by adrenaline.

"My head! My head, I'm _burning!"_ he shrieked, making all three men wince at the volume of his voice in the cramped space of the elevator. "I can't see! Let me go, no-_let me go!_ _Big brother!"_

"I'm here!" Kaiba grunted, his exhausted arms screamed in protest as he attempted to contain Mokuba's kicking limbs. "I'm right here! _Calm down_!"

At the sound of his voice, all at once Mokuba began to fall slack in their grip and Kaiba sighed, relieved, and rested his hand back on the boy's cheek. He pulled it away damp with blood and tears.

"Seto? Is that you?" Mokuba groaned, squinting up at him.

"Yeah, it's me." Kaiba smiled before he could stop himself. After prematurely grieving his death, the sound of Mokuba's voice, groggy and pained as it was, was liberation beyond compare. Suddenly he found himself craving the sight of his brother laughing and happy again, he'd seen far too much of him angry or covered in blood.

"I can't see well, the light is too bright-_oooooohhhhh."_ Suddenly Mokuba moaned painfully, pressing his face into Kaiba's chest. "Oh my god, my _head."_

The upside of Mokuba waking up now was the early relief on Kaiba's part, but the downside of was, of course, his injury. Kaiba realized he'd dropped Roland's jacket somewhere in the struggle and groped around on the floor for it.

"You're okay, you got shot."

"_Shot?_"

"It's just a graze."

"It feels like there's a million coals burning into my head…" the boy whimpered tears brimming from his eyes as he clenched them shut, and suddenly Kaiba felt the hot ferocity of anger blossom inside him. Someone had done this to Mokuba. Someone had tried to kill his brother, an innocent child, just skating the edge of puberty. Not kidnap, or use as a bargaining chip or ransom, but kill him. _Kill_ him.

His fists were trembling when he pressed the jacket back into Mokuba's head, and when he looked up at his assistants they were fidgeting uncomfortably. At first he thought it was because of their intrusion on the close moment between the brothers, but then he realized it probably had more to do with his intimidating "tear gas aura" of anger. His attention was drawn away from them as Mokuba began speaking again.

"I was looking for the blueprints...and then I heard a crash and I looked up and…my head felt cold and everything went black…" he muttered, slowly piecing things together just as Kaiba had moments ago, but rather than coming to the same conclusions as his brother, his mouth fell open and he stared up at Kaiba, shocked.

Kaiba frowned, confused as the boy's eyes filled with tears again.

"Oh my god…" he gasped out. "Oh my god Seto I'm so sorry."

_'He's apologizing for the fight.'_ Kaiba realised, his jaw falling open. _'After everything…'_

"Mokuba you don't need to apologize."

"No, I do. The fight was so _stupid_." He shut his eyes and turned his head away as though he was ashamed. "We nearly died angry with each other…I'm sorry."

"We nearly died, full stop." Kaiba muttered. The statement sounded almost cruel after Mokuba's apology, but any chastising edge his words held was dulled by the warm affection underlying it.

Because of course Mokuba recognized that factor first, he was one of the most thoughtful, empathetic people Kaiba knew. He'd almost lost that.

He felt his throat tighten. After that realization some kind of force was pushing against his throat, compelling him to speak. To say what he should, now that he could do it. "Mokuba…I lo-"

"Sorry to interrupt Mr Kaiba, but we're almost at the first floor."

The force that had compelled him faltered and then scurried away. He felt his irritation mount and turned to begin snapping at Roland before he felt Mokuba squeeze his hand. When he glanced back down his brother had that look in his eyes. That look of complete and utter understanding that allowed the brothers to go on all these years with not a single straight, verbal confirmation of the fact they both knew, and yet at the same time not a single doubt in their minds.

He didn't have to finish. He probably wouldn't have managed anyway, or later regretted blurting it out in front of his assistants. Whether he said it or not, it didn't matter. Mokuba knew. They both did.

It was his greatest secret. Seto Kaiba _did_ have a heart, and it belonged to his brother.

"We're at the seventh floor now. When we reach the first floor, we need to get to the car as quickly as possible, then we'll drive you to the safe house. Hopefully by then the police will have arrived, and can send someone to tail us." Roland talked fast and wiped the sweat off his brow.

Kaiba nodded and slowly lowered Mokuba into a seated position on the floor, where he grabbed Kaiba's shoulder for support and gently stood on shaking legs.

_Five._

"Think you can walk?"

"Yeah I'm okay. A little dizzy, but okay."

_Four._

"Keep the jacket on your graze."

"Got it. It hurts…"

"I know, kiddo. Just hold on."

_Three._

"Can _you_ walk, Seto?"

"…I'm fine."

"Liar."

_Two._

"Ready?" Fugata asked them all, positioning himself at the doors.

Roland gently grasped Mokuba's arm as he tested the strength in his legs and pressed the sticky jacket to his head. Both of them watched, worried as Kaiba stood, legs aching and visibly trembling under his weight.

Kaiba bit back humiliation at his own weakness, and braced himself at the doors.

"Ready." He rasped.

And with that, the elevator slid to a stop on the first floor of Kaiba Corp, and signaled the beginning of their next fight for survival with a tiny, cheerful _ding!_


	4. Into The Fire

_No, I'm not dead. God DAMN this was hard to write! Why on Earth did I choose an action type story I don't know.  
I wanted to wrap up this part of the story in one chapter but at over 7k words I decided to split it, and I'm glad I caved so I can finally update. This means even more cliffhangers, but it also means that hopefully the next chapter won't be too far off as a large amount is done already.  
Sorry for the delay, please enjoy!_

* * *

**Into The Fire**

When the elevator doors parted, the car was the first thing he saw.

It sat on the concrete, purring behind Kaiba Corp's glass doors like a dangerous animal in its enclosure. Huge in size and yet compact and sleek like a bullet, this was the security vehicle Kaiba had designed himself for emergency getaways such as these.

In the eyes of an inventor every piece of machinery got turned inside out, and scanning the vehicle's smooth shape, Kaiba mapped it's layout from force of habit. Carving black lines into the metal, old blueprints swimming up in his memory.

From within his broken fortress, it beamed in the sunlight like a beacon of hope. And he peered out at it, gauging the distance.

The gap between the doors and the waiting car was nothing. It's wheels were huge, made for rolling over hills and up stairs, with the added smooth steering and speed for on-road travel. It had managed to drive up the stairs leading to the building, dodge the gaudy Blue Eyes White Dragon statues that guarded the entrance, and sidle as close to the doors as it could without smashing into the pillars.

It was nothing more than a few steps away, but from where he was standing it looked like they were about to cross a warzone. The only cover they had out there was the one that shaded the entrance to Kaiba Corp and the shooters could be anywhere waiting to finish the job, on foot or in a building nearby. And as amateur as they were, they got damned close the first time.

He glanced to the left of him at his brother, supported by Roland's shaky hands and cradling his head, dried blood crusting at his temple like dead jungle vines.

'_Too close.'_

When they emerged from the elevator, their shuffling footsteps engulfed the room and Kaiba's eyes flew everywhere, taking it in.

The ground floor of Kaiba Corp had been evacuated. With doors flung open and chairs askew, it gaped open and empty like the hollow chest of a carcass.

Kaiba was thankful that he and his injured brother didn't need to strain themselves maneuvering around a flock of distressed workers, but at the same time it chilled him a little to see Kaiba Corp so empty. He stayed in late to finish work regularly, and he was more than used to prowling the deserted building at night, but something about the sunshine that streamed through the windows made the scene strange and unsettling. What used to be a natural process of the day transformed into an abrupt disturbance.

And in the daylight it all looked staged, fake. Like he'd just walked onto a TV set. Like someone had demolished his empire into a fading memory. Even now, it seemed like everything was crumbling around him, and the feeling sent dread burrowing into his gut, deadly and secret like shards of shrapnel.

Fours sets of scuffing, hurried feet echoed through the empty floor as they moved as a pack towards the doors. Pressing forward was their only chance for survival, and yet a small part of him was tugging him back, pleading for him to slam on the brakes and retreat: An illogical scream for self preservation that crawled up his spine in the form of fear.

Fear was nothing new to Kaiba. It dominated memories of his childhood like a dark stain, and he learned first-hand that despite its "necessity" as a survival instinct, it was nothing more than an exploitable weakness hard wired into every living creature and could easily be manipulated to turn your own body against you.

He'd quickly decided it was an impotence he couldn't afford...so he'd analyzed it, studied it's patterns and strategies and forged it into his memory so it could never immobilize him again. Right now it was slithering all around his body, feeling him out for his soft spots like a pervert revisiting an old victim, and with Kaiba Corp's illusion of protection crippled, it clawed it's way in easier than he liked to admit.

The moment the bullets started flying, his illusion of control evaporated around him like the way pixels shattered and disappeared when his Blue Eyes was obliterated from the playing field.

The memory of him sprinting through his wreckage of an office while bullets snapped at his heels like bloodhounds made him grimace. There was something especially pathetic about running from a fight, regardless of the odds.

And seeing his brother hurt like that had shocked him to his core.

In his mind, he built himself like a god, more powerful than anything that might come for him or his family again, but now the curtain had dropped, and he was left trembling under the spotlights while the truth of mortality came crashing back in. It wasn't a common occurrence, but it became blindingly clear whenever his brother was in danger.

It made his pompous image look like a fool's joke in comparison.

Within the impenetrable barriers he had built for himself it was little more than a flicker of doubt, but it allowed terror to jam its knuckles between his shields and force its way into his head.

Gone was his pride, now Kaiba was all defensive instinct: hunched shoulders and heavy breath. The minute he dragged himself out of the elevator, he immediately became aware of the weaknesses of his surroundings, eyes darting to every exposed window around him, every door and shadow. The fresh air seemed to bite his skin, a constant reminder of his exposure. Out here there was no protection, and no control.

He let his fingers rest between his brother's shoulder blades, absently searching for the pulse that tore him from his all-encompassing grief only minutes ago, and reminded himself to breathe and maintain composure. He focused his attention forward, up at the waiting car and the glass doors that separated them from the firing range ahead.

Fugata inched forward and they all jumped a little as the sliding doors parted automatically. At the motion, the right doors of the car, the ones facing them, bounced open and two men in Kaiba's security team wearing black clothes, sunglasses and grim, stony expressions peered out. They sat rigid, coiled tight like springs and ready to jump into action.

One was in the front seat and another in the back, both with one vacant seat beside them. Kaiba realized that with only two seats remaining, his assistants would be left behind.

He heard a cough and glanced over at Roland, who motioned at Mokuba with his head questioningly. Kaiba nodded in affirmation and stared outside, eyes darting everywhere. Everything seemed so still, almost unnaturally so – the courtyard empty, the usually bustling surroundings poised static like a bated breath.

A chill trickled up Kaiba's back and he raised a hand, signaling for Roland to wait and the man froze in place. Quiet had fallen upon them all. There was something about imminent death that turned everyone mute.

Kaiba allowed his gaze to linger on everything he could see, mapping the area out in his mind, over and over so he could detect even the smallest change, the tiniest movement. It was what he told himself. But it was a lie...he was stalling.

Stalling, the way a desperate man on his last legs stalls.

But they were running out of time. So he turned to Roland and nodded again, and the man immediately leaned down to Mokuba and, with his surprising strength, scooped him up unceremoniously into his arms.

"_Roland! _Wha-" Mokuba squawked indignantly before Roland darted out of the doors and towards the car.

As Mokuba and Roland bounced gracelessly into the shooting range the icy fingers of fear toyed with Kaiba's intestines, shuffling through them like playing cards. The scene from earlier flashed into his mind, of Mokuba sprawled on the floor in his office, and his body jolted involuntarily, like he was seconds away from running out to him.

'_I should be out there, he should be in _my _arms.'_ He told himself, but even as he did, the searing pain in his leg tore all fantasy of heroism to pieces.

So he waited and he watched, and just like that, Roland reached the car and hurriedly pressed Mokuba into the back like he was shoving the stuffing back into a torn teddy bear. Leather gloves flashed in the sunlight as two hands grabbed Mokuba's shoulders from within the car and pulled him in, and like sealing a wound, Roland slammed the door shut behind him.

Kaiba quietly huffed in relief before he realized that it was his turn.

"Mr Kaiba…?" Fugata muttered quietly, offering his arm. Kaiba considered it for a second before shaking his head and turning back towards the car, feeling already certain that he would come to regret that decision.

He leaned back on his heels and banished fear from his mind, bracing himself for take off. Preparing to leave his fallen castle behind.

In typical fashion, his goodbyes were short. His office was destroyed, the floors lifeless. Now it was just an empty building.

Foolishly, the Kaiba Corp tower had been his only protection from threat and it had, for the most part, failed. Failure made it outdated, a relic of the past. Something to advance from.

And so, Kaiba advanced. From the frying pan into the fire.

Once again, everything of little importance drifted away from him as Kaiba began running. The glass doors slid in and around his peripherals as he left them behind.

He moved as fast across the space as his injured leg allowed him, and every step fell heavy on the pavement and sent fiery sparks of pain shooting up his calf. Rather than yielding, he gritted his teeth and pressed on through the sharp burning sensation, and the glossy black doors grew closer and closer, so fast that he was sure than any second a bullet would come flying through his head. It just seemed too easy. Too simple.

Then suddenly the car blurred before him and the ground seemed to expand beneath his feet, throwing him off balance. His limited energy was finally fully depleted and the blood rushed from his head as dizziness overtook him.

Everything was jumbled. His skull became a vacuum and it felt as if his eyes were being sucked out of their sockets. Pins and needles scattered over his skin. Black blotches appeared in his vision and spread like spilled ink and, without stopping, he clenched his eyes shut.

He only knew he'd reached the car when his legs collided sharply with the door step and a pair of big hands roughly grabbed at his arms, sinking into the fabric of his shirt, and helped pull him up onto the step and then into the shade of the vehicle. Another warm hand, Roland's hand, ghosted over his back, pushing him in, then it drifted away.

The dizzy spell had sapped all gracefulness from him. When he stepped inside he bumped his head on the ceiling as he attempted to straighten his stooped posture and stumbled across the limited leg space. He didn't register that his eyes were shut, merely that he couldn't see, and boxed in by the car's interior, he eventually toppled into his seat when he realized that the door had shut beside him and he had nowhere else to go. The motion made his head whirl like a spinning top.

He heard a sharp order of "Strap in!" from his left, and as the air filled with the metallic clicking of seat belts being fastened, he groped at his side for his in an attempt to follow suit.

He knew exactly where the belt _should_ be, he'd designed the car himself for god's sake. But currently, with the world tilting on its axis, he couldn't locate it.

Blindly, his fumbling fingers ran up and down the side of his seat and he tried to put names to textures: smooth, glossy leather, hard plastic…but no metal buckle.

The engine came alive and the car rumbled beneath his feet, buzzing through the soles of his shoes. Just as he began getting frantic, groping for the belt, he felt small hands grip his shoulders, then lean over him to guide the buckle across his torso and into place at his left.

"Geez Seto. You're really out of it, huh?" he heard Mokuba mutter close to his ear, warm breath brushing his neck. Somewhere behind him came a man's voice in the blunt bite of a command, but Mokuba didn't leave him and he was glad.

The comfort of his brother's presence was the only thing of certainty in the fog of nameless sensations around him, and he anchored himself on the feeling of the boy's warm hands.

The car lurched back as it sped off and thudded violently down Kaiba Corp's stairs, and while his body jerked and bounced in his seat his consciousness remained still and his straining muscles finally began to ease.

"Relax, big brother."

Mokuba's voice was quiet when it came to him. Soft. His tough leather seat seemed to swallow him up. It suddenly occurred to him how exhausted he was.

"It's all over now, Seto. Everything's gonna be okay."

His words were so sweet. Intoxicatingly so.

Lies usually are.

Kaiba drifted.

The soft husk of Mokuba's voice floated around him, words he recognized but for some reason, couldn't understand.

Blurred buildings flew past. The sleek, black car jumped from window to window as they passed, reflected by the shiny glass of corporate Domino skyscrapers.

The car rumbled beneath him.

Darkness clouded in.

Then suddenly disappeared.

All the events of the day rushed back to him. He was shocked into consciousness and suddenly leapt up in his chair, like a prisoner in the electric chair jumping at the first volts.

"Sir, you should avoid moving around until we get to the safe house." In his peripheral vision, Kaiba glimpsed the driver addressing him in a voice so stiffly professional it seemed almost robotic. "You don't want to strain your injuries."

As if in agreement, his calf throbbed sharply and Kaiba gritted his teeth and sunk back into his seat. He turned his head and peered around the black leather headrest to see Mokuba blinking slowly and tiredly behind him, as though he could barely keep his eyes open. His brow was furrowed in discomfort as blood began to dot the bandage that had been wrapped around his head. He looked as exhausted as Kaiba felt.

"Little brother." Kaiba muttered. Mokuba's eyes traced a path up the back of his seat before settling on his face, his movements slow from exhaustion.

Kaiba took the sight of the boy in wearily and asked, "Are you alright?"

Dazed, Mokuba blinked for a moment and gave a small nod and smile. Then he slumped back into the seat, lips drooping heavily into a grimace, and Kaiba took what little relief he could get from that.

The young billionaire shut his eyes and eased forward in his seat again, moving slowly as if the dull headache he could feel building behind his eyes would lash out like a scared animal at any sudden movements. When he caught sight of a water bottle in the centre console of the car he grabbed it with shaky fingers and drank as much as he could before nausea rushed in and he remembered to pace himself. Then he downed the painkillers he was handed by the younger guard seated next to Mokuba, the "medic" of the two.

It was only when he swallowed his last gulp of water and looked forward, out of the windshield that he began to examine the surroundings that sped past. He didn't recognize them.

"Where are we?" he grimaced at the way his voice sounded. The only force behind it was the short breath he took to speak. He hated seeming so feeble.

"Barter Street, West Domino." The driver replied gruffly.

Kaiba understood at once. They were taking one of several routes to get to their assigned safe house. He just needed to remain conscious and hold out until then. He felt a hot sting of embarrassment as he recalled how he passed out earlier, but the emotion was useless to him so he discarded it.

"Police?" he grunted.

"They've been notified." the driver raised a gloved hand and tapped at a black earpiece he wore.

Kaiba's eyes narrowed. "But they haven't shown up?"

"Not yet, sir."

"_Tch_." He scowled, irritated. With the weight of intense stress bearing down on his shoulders, every shortcoming became an insult. But he was too exhausted for pointless anger, so he simply fell silent.

The car was quiet aside from the humming engine and Mokuba's strained breathing. In the moment of peace, Kaiba allowed his keen observation to return, and staring out of the window he took in Barter Street.

For an outsider it was hard to picture, but Kaiba knew all too well that even the glamorous Domino yielded to the miserable truth of poverty, and it grew like mold on the fringes of the city.

At this time in the afternoon, the streets and roads around them were almost deserted. Kaiba distinctly remembered seeing the shiny glass windows of skyscrapers while he was drifting in and out of consciousness. Now the only windows that they passed were the grimy glass of storefronts and shops, and he could see that in this place the line between thriving and abandoned was a big one.

For every store window cluttered with television sets there were three that were broken, empty and covered with graffiti. For every bustling grocery store there were three dark, abandoned buildings that crawled past the car like cockroaches.

Kaiba hated the sight of poverty. There was a distinctive smell that had crept into his memory from his childhood, of cheap detergent that struggled to smother the underlying filth from an old overused cot, and the mere sight of this place triggered that smell again. He grimaced deeply, so much so that the bodyguard beside Mokuba leaned forward and asked if his injuries were paining him, which he denied.

'_Not injuries, just memories…'_

He leaned into the firm car seat, settling on the headrest, and retreated into a place in his mind full of numbers and calculations. Here, knowledge and logic ruled, and the ghosts of his past couldn't touch him.

It wasn't memories he needed to worry about.

Instead he focused on the current course of events. So far everything was going to plan: escape Kaiba Corp, take one of several routes to the safe house with protection from his highly-trained security team, and the minute they reached the safe house they would be attended to by Kaiba's personal doctors and he could focus on picking up the pieces. Making something of this mess of blood and bullets.

That was, assuming nothing went wrong.

"Aw crap." Mokuba muttered behind him.

He turned in his seat to see the bodyguard beside his brother taking a hold of the bandages on Mokuba's head that seemed to have come loose.

"I was trying to rest my head, sorry." Mokuba directed towards the man's disgruntled expression. He winced a little as the bandages were pulled tight over his skull, and Kaiba watched every tiny twitch in his features with a cold, mounting fury that held him with a sweet familiarity.

Kaiba decided in that moment that his first course of action after medical care was discovering who was responsible for making his brother bleed. Whoever they were, he was going to burn them to the ground.

His hungry, building rage was interrupted as Mokuba shot a tired, sheepish grin his way. Kaiba allowed a small smile himself and forced his hatred to dissipate – it had no place in moments like these, he had learned that a long time ago.

He watched on as the boy rested his chin in his hand and peered out of the window as the bandages were secured again.

He looked as tired as he did before, but a sense of calm had relaxed his strained features, and aside from the bandages a sense of normality was returning to the sight of him.

_Normality_...imagine that. Dodged death with nothing but a bullet graze to show for it and he looked _normal_.

Not a day went by that his brother's unobserved strength didn't stun him.

"_It's all over now, Seto. Everything's gonna be okay."_

Before he passed out Mokuba had said that to him.

The words hummed in his ears, and watching the boy as he squinted out at the passing roads and buildings, for a moment he dared to believe they could be true.

But only for a moment.

Staring out of the window, Mokuba's eyes suddenly grew wide and he sucked in a shuddering breath.

A chill surged down Kaiba's spine like lightening and he whirled in his seat to see out of his own window. There was a speeding blur of motion – a huge truck surging at him, heading straight for their side of the car. His pulse thrummed once in his temples, like the final tick of a time bomb.

The next few seconds was a chaotic mash of sensations. The sound of impact exploded in his ears. His head snapped violently to the left and a shearing pressure blossomed in his neck as his muscles strained from the movement. His seat belt bit sharply into his shoulder as his body was thrown in his seat like a rag doll.

When he peered through his clenched eyes he saw through a spiderweb of thick white cracks in the windshield that Barter Street was whirling around them. He wanted to reach behind him for Mokuba, to reassure and anchor himself as they spun out of control yet again, but knew there was no way he could.

So he squeezed his eyes shut and gripped the sides of his seat, waiting for it to end with his stomach twisting into knots and a million screeching noises fighting for dominance in his ears. Memories of Mokuba's pale, bloodied face consumed his mind and stained his eyelids white and red.

Finally the car came to a grinding, heaving stop on the far side of the intersection, engines steaming and glass tinkling to the ground.

When Kaiba eased himself up in his seat it felt like his head had been detached, and with every tiny movement his surroundings hurtled around him.

With fingers that faltered in the air and sagged like led, he grabbed at his seat belt and began tugging at it like a frustrated toddler.

In his head a voice sprang up, clear and calculated like an automated response, reminding him that the correct protocol during a car crash was to remain still in case of neck or spinal injury.

Another voice bellowed up from his guts like fire and screamed '_FUCK PROTOCOL!'_

_'Fuck it.'_ Mokuba was the first priority.

He called out for his brother, and with his ears still ringing he couldn't tell if the name came out in a whisper or a scream.

Somehow he managed to undo the belt and it whipped back across his chest, freeing him. He immediately turned in his seat to see Mokuba.

When the young bodyguard behind him saw his employer was ignoring protocol and shifting in his seat he lurched forward and began shouting in an attempt to stop him. His words were lost in a sea of keening, crashing sounds that bounced around Kaiba's skull, so he ignored them and instead craned his neck towards his brother's messy black head.

What he saw didn't calm him in the least. Mokuba, with his rosy glow and their father's natural tan, was looking the palest Kaiba had ever seen him in his life. The word "corpse-like" drifted into his mind and it chilled him to the bone. The crash had further unsettled Mokuba's head wound and it was bleeding afresh beneath the bandages. Kaiba didn't even want to think about how much blood he'd lost, or how much he had left.

The plan that he had charted so clearly before crumbled in his palms, and he was so helplessly furious he felt like screaming, but he didn't – another emotional outburst was the last thing they needed. Instead, he swallowed it like his bile and it tasted even worse.

Following Kaiba's eye line to his brother, the guard released his shoulders, hovering over Mokuba instead and dancing his fingers around the boy's skull.

Mokuba's eyelids fluttered and slowly cracked open, his unfocused steely blues rolling first to the guard and then over to Kaiba. They remained on his brother and began to focus as the guard flitted around him, first checking his pulse, then examining his head and then his neck, all the while asking rapid-fire questions that came to Kaiba with more and more clarity as the ringing in his ears subsided.

Through vision that ebbed like a tide, Kaiba tore his gaze from his brother and scanned the horizon past the car's the tinted windows, until his gaze landed on the truck that had collided with them.

It was huge, like a great hulking beast made of metal and steel, like some kind of mechanical mutant. Clearly heavily armored and ugly from the bulkiness, it had withstood the crash with barely a dent to show for it.

Kaiba felt something – a nagging scratch at the back of his skull. Recognition. He had seen this vehicle before.

Then he forced his swaying vision to focus and caught sight of it: the old _Kaiba Corporation_ logo that sat, smugly distinct after all these years, on one of the front doors.

First came the stunning, sickening shock of it. Then the quiet, venomous fury that rose up from his stomach, stiffening his shoulders. The dread that rolled in like a storm. A revolting, familiar sensation.

Long ago abandoned, it rose up from within like blood surging to the surface, old wounds bleeding fresh.

Of course their attackers had chased them down with one of Gozaburo's vile creations. Probably fired at them with old Kaiba Corporation guns as well. It made him sick to think that the bullet that struck his brother down bore the fingerprint of their step-father, perhaps even a fingerprint of his own…

The anger, the dread, it encompassed him entirely. Made his hands shake. He could almost _smell_ the cigar smoke.

After every blow he took to protect Mokuba, every tower he toppled to finally defeat Gozaburo...only for this old enemy to rise again and the remains of his creations, weapons born from his rage and power to hunt them down.

To rescue himself and his brother, to sate his yearning for revenge, Kaiba had risen up and stolen his step-father's legacy from beneath him. He had obliterated everything that Gozaburo had built, and in the process the shards of the man's fallen empire had scattered through Kaiba's life, laying dormant for years. And now they were poised and ready to fire.

And rather than at masses of foreign soldiers or faceless politicians, they pointed straight at Gozaburo's true enemy all along. The man who would one day succeed him in every way – his step son, Seto Kaiba.

And everything he held dear.


End file.
